4.03: Fantasy and microchips, shootin' from the hip.

[katana_hacker]

Hiro is back in the lab, trying to figure something out. There was no real reason for the cure not to work, but the fact is, it didn't. Not completely, anyway. But it should've been complete. Which leaves Hiro wondering: what the hell went wrong?

So he's looking at the vaccine code scrolling past on a vidwindow. It's not an exact copy of SnowScan

Comments

[mend_and_defend]

It's time to come clean.

Bob's been wavering about whether or not to tell Hiro what he knows--if Hiro tells Dot, the whole thing'll unravel. But getting the cure to work is too important to let Bob's own misgivings get in the way. It's time to come clean.

"Hiro?"

[katana_hacker]

Hiro is so focused on the code analysis that he doesn't realize Bob is in the room until the Guardian speaks to him. "hm? Oh, hey, Bob. What's processing?"

[mend_and_defend]

"I wanted to talk to you. About the antivirus."

[katana_hacker]

That gets Hiro's undivided attention. "I'm listening."

[mend_and_defend]

Bob takes a shaky breath, his nerve suddenly failing him. "Uh... what have you been able to find out?"

[katana_hacker]

"Not much." He waves in the general direction of the vidwindow, which is pretty close-up on the code structure of the antivirus. "I was about to zoom out a little and see if a clearer pattern showed up."

[mend_and_defend]

Bob hesitates, then sighs. "You're not going to find one. There's nothing wrong with the antivirus."

[katana_hacker]

Nothing wrong with it, my entire ASCII, Hiro thinks. Then he decides to take Bob's comment only as meaning that it's not his coding skillz that are at fault here. "So what's the difficulty?"

[mend_and_defend]

"It's me. I... ah... I didn't tell you how we got out of the Web, did I?"

[katana_hacker]

"Not really, now that you mention it."

[mend_and_defend]

Bob takes a deep breath. These are not memories he likes to revisit.

"When Megabyte trapped me in the Web, the first thing he did was take away Glitch--my keytool. Keytools are special machines some Guardians have, they can turn into whatever tool you need to perform a particular function. Without Glitch, I had no way of fighting back or getting out of the Web by myself.

"When Matrix came to find me in the Web, he had Glitch with him, but it was damaged. It couldn't make the portal we needed to get home. So we... merged our code together. Glitch is a part of me now, that's how I can fly and make portals and scan for filetypes. Except..." He sighs. "Except that both of us had damaged code when we merged, so now my code is even more corrupted."

[katana_hacker]

"And that's why the antivirus didn't completely cure Turbo? This is not good." Then something hits him like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. "And it's not good for you either, is it?"

[mend_and_defend]

Bob just shakes his head, not meeting Hiro's eyes.

[katana_hacker]

This frees Hiro's eyes to flick to the vidwindow, and to linger there... long enough to notice the same things Phong spotted. Little single-bit errors in the code copied from Bob. Errors that added up to the vaccine's failure, errors that must really add up in a processing dataform. "...is this going to kill you? If we can't stop it before then, that is."

[mend_and_defend]

"And do you also know that continued use of your Glitch powers... will result in total fragmentation?"
"But I'm a Guardian. I can't go against my code."
"Dot will never allow you to--"
"And that's why we're not gonna tell Dot."
"If I've lasted this long, I'll probably be okay."

Not exactly a lie, but not exactly the truth, either.

[katana_hacker]

"If you say so." Hiro's willing to give Bob the benefit of the doubt, but he's also planning to keep his powder dry. "Just do me a favor, okay? If your condition starts to seriously turn for the worse, please ask for help before you de-rezz."